Survivors' guilt
by jammywho
Summary: The ninth Doctor deals with the immediate aftermath of the Time War, set against the life of a post WW2 general. A short one off set between the Time War and Rose.


The general stood before his troops and cried.

There they were, all standing to attention, packed, all in lines. He knew nearly all their names, their ranks, their platoons, even their birthdays; he'd tried to memorise them all. Surely that was the very least he could do? There were a few of them, of course, that he could never quite remember, could never place a name and he always felt guilty about that. Their stony faces stared at him endlessly, those nameless ones stared harder. They didn't say a word as their general wept; how could they? But the general knew what they'd say if they could.

They'd say, why are you standing there, when all of us are dead?

Had they not saved his life where he had failed? Had they not fought as bravely or as well? Did they have less faith? Did they not follow his orders obediently and without hesitation? What made him so special? He had the power of life and death over them and he'd let them all down.

It was a calm evening in the year 1963, a year none of them would ever see, under a sky none of them would ever know. None of them would ever cry again, so he did that for all of them. He wept for friends and for colleagues, for the young and the old, but he shed the largest tears for those he didn't know at all; those whose tombstones bore no names, whose deaths were his own fault.

Some of them had been digging tunnels under trenches when the worst happened, the dirt fell upon them in its masses, replacing the air in their lungs, and killing them in the slowest and most hopeless way possible. They'd mourned for them then, when there were no bodies to mourn, and then they mourned for them again, when German artillery fire had obliterated the earth between the trenches, flinging their mangled corpses up, breaking them again. They were beyond recognition, so no-one knew who to cry for. But they cried anyway.

Their bodies were buried again a few days later. The coffins stood erect; they had to be, or else the cemetery couldn't hold them all. And so they were laid to rest like good little soldiers, standing to attention, following authority once more. The general hoped they had a better leader where they went.

The guilt rushed over him in tides, and, while gasping apologies to deaf ears, he left the graveyard, just for a little while, he promised, and then he'd be back. He'd salute them all, he'd apologise and he'd feel their revenge upon him, their names etching themselves onto his heart as if it were a tombstone.

When he came back, he saw a man looking over the graveyard, with his back to the general. He was dressed in all black, but not formal, no suit and tie; a leather jacket, in fact. He didn't want to give the War the dignity it demanded of him. The general tried to talk to him; he called out, but the man paid him no mind. Of course not, thought the general; why should he talk to me? He's in mourning, clearly. He has that face he knew so well, because it was the same face he saw in the mirror every day. The face of a reluctant survivor. The face weighed down with decisions and risk and cost.

And a terrifyingly calm anger.

It was the sort of anger around which you could revolve the stars. Or that the stars would bend around it, so scared were they of its wrath. This was a man who looked like history wrinkled in his presence and with every movement, every involuntary shiver of guilt, you could see the changes, the ripples, the consequences that radiated from him.

The man looked as if he could see every grave at once, yet he focused on none in particular. He wasn't here to mourn for a friend or a relative, indeed, it looked as if he knew he wouldn't find who he was looking for here. He couldn't know any of their names, but he felt each and every loss. There was something about him, perhaps a strangeness, an alien nature, that suggested he thought these soldiers were not his people, that this was not his war.

But that it was his fault.

The general slept that night, in places. His dreams came to him uncertainly, changing frequently and rapidly, as if worrying themselves. He dreamt, (well, he was fairly sure he did), of other wars, alike to his but different. His dreams spoke to him of contradictions, of soldiers long dead saved, and those few survivors dying. Within his mind formed opposing images of war, so he no longer knew what he was fighting for, only that with each and every new memory (while the old struggled to remain real), he knew he had to fight. That was how war worked. You had to fight and nothing could change that.

And he dreamt about the man in the black jacket, who soared into the battlefield in a blue box, shielding the brave men just at the right time, so that a bullet would only dent the wood, or that rocks would just tumble over the roof, or that the gas couldn't infiltrate their lungs.

He dreamt of a temple of sorts, bigger and grander on the inside, one that existed just as he thought his death was certain: was this what heaven looked like? The man was there as well, mumbling something about changing history when explosions worked their way warningly around his control panel.

He was fighting the impossible, being a one man front in the war, but everything he did created consequences. He saw the man again and again and again, every time while on the verge of death, and every time different. He saw times when the allies won and times when the axis won. He was fairly sure he saw death a few times too. But that man was more constant than any of them.

The dream calmed down, then. The man sat beside him, broken. He explained how he saw the general crying in the graveyard and how he saw all of the fallen and decided to take a stand. But history was too difficult, he said. War was too large and too chaotic. There was no way to stop it and that whatever he did, there'd be consequences and death.

The general put a hand on his shoulder. You can't change history, he said. And they wept together.

He woke up the next day, feeling slightly alien in his own life. He only had the image of what was around him to confirm what was actually real. It was his house, sure enough and everything had been how he left it last night. He felt he'd been through quite a few versions of real last night, so he was no longer entirely certain. Perhaps what was different was him.

He went down to the graveyard, as was his penance, and as he entered, he saw the man again. He was walking away, into his blue box, grey stains on his jacket. The general called after him, wanting to know if this man shared his experience and his dreams, but the door of his box closed behind him.

And suddenly, with a wailing, it vanished.

Of course, he wanted to be alone with his sorrow.

He went to where it stood; a perfect square of grass had been pressed down underneath it, but there was very little to show it had been there at all. Except…

There was a hammer and chisel. Had they belonged to this man?

The general went back to his mourning, addressing his troops, taking the time for each of them. He strode along every row, every flank, and greeted them all in turn.

Then he sighed and gathered breath for the last bit of his route. The tombs of the unknown soldiers; those who he'd never get to remember. He drew his handkerchief ready and walked carefully towards them.

So many of them had lost their lives, some heroically, some not, but we'd never know which, he thought. Their futile gestures lost, their sacrifices forgotten, their names non existent.

He paused for a moment at one grave in particular; Daniel Hardy. He was struck by guilt now; he'd never known Daniel Hardy, but he could see his life and death in front of him. The name was new to him; he obviously hadn't learned his name in his various walks among the dead. He made sure to apologise and spend extra time with Robert.

But then the same thing happened again; another new name: Ronald Prentice. He'd heard stories of Ron, who made so many soldiers laugh. And another: Harold Richards, a doctor, not a solider. There seemed to be a few drops of water on his stone. A fourth: Annie Douglas, a young girl who'd joined up to help out.

Walter Trent, Peter Cavendish, Oscar Brown.

It's not just me, he thought. These names weren't here before. They couldn't be; these were the graves of the Unknown Soldiers.

They were all newly carved. All of them. Their nameless tombs covered and re-inscribed. They had names now. Each of them had a full name, a birth, a death, a hometown, a family, and even a short eulogy.

He looked around, and every blank and forgetful tombstone had this. Every single one.

And there.

There was his: there was the grave of Malcolm Finch. His best friend, to whom he'd never got to say goodbye, because in the rage of war, names could be wiped away as easily as human life. He collapsed to his knees and placed a wistful hand on the tombstone. He'd be remembered. Always.

He thought back to that man in his blue box and his chisel, the man so very full of rage and loss. Maybe that rage couldn't bend history, because history couldn't be forced. But it could be remembered. And those memories could be the fuel on which the future runs. And that calm, righteous rage, maybe that will help him along until, one day, he finds he no longer needs it.

He'd remember that nameless man.

But now his head was swimming: all sorts of people he needed to contact; to tell them where their relatives were, to show them the part they played in the great victory, to honour their ancestors, to get them the credit they deserved.

And once again, the general cried.


End file.
